Over 10 million Americans could miss work Monday because of the 'Game of Thrones' finale

Abigail Rosenthal, GateHouse Media

Thursday

May 16, 2019 at 2:42 PM

The entirety of "Game of Thrones" and its frequent character deaths has caused fans a lot of mourning over the years. But after Sunday, fans will be mourning the end of the series itself — and it might have a big effect on the workplace Monday morning.

An estimated 10.7 million Americans are planning on skipping work after the finale of the HBO hit, according to a survey by The Workforce Institute at Kronos.

The "Absence Is Coming" survey asked 1,090 employed U.S. adults what their "Game of Thrones" plans were and found that one-third were planning on watching the final while 22% plan on skipping work the next day. With 143.1 million employed adults in America, the survey came up with the staggering number of absences.

But even those who are at their desk might not be very productive. In total, a possible 27.2 million employees who plan to watch the finale live say they will either miss work completely, arrive late, work remotely, be less productive than usual, or experience some other impact from the show's end.

It's not unheard of for a TV event to have a big effect on the workplace — over 17 million people were expected to miss work after Super Bowl LIII.

Series finales can also have an impact on the stock market. After the end of AMC's "Mad Men," NPR spoke with researcher Gabriele Lepori from Keele University about what he has observed in researching 150 popular TV show finales.

"What I find is that when a TV show ends, I observe a decrease in stock returns on the following trading day," Lepori told NPR. "The higher the number of TV viewers for that episode, the larger the decrease in stock returns on the following day."

And the grieving period following a show's end is definitely real.

"Since we see (those characters) every week, we tend to develop an emotional attachment with them," Lepori told NPR. "So that when we lose them because, say, a TV show ends, we tend to experience a negative emotional reaction that is similar to the reaction we would experience when a real relationship ends."

Expect less desks filled the day after the Iron Throne is filled — TV mourning is real.

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